How does it work from .avi to DVD with filesizes

[herbster]

Okay, so I have some .avi's that I am planning on making DVDs out of with VSO ConvertXtoDVD. Now in the program when I add the video files, the status bar at the bottom says how many videos and it also gives a figure of how large it will be on DVD. It says for example "4.87gb on media" however I have only added maybe 5 or 6 x 300mb .avi files. That should be about 1.5-2gb, no? I'm just unclear on what's happening, and I'm afraid that if I add more .avi's ignoring the figure VSO is giving, that it will squish too many onto one DVD and sacrifice quality. Is VSO telling me where to stop so it retains full quality of the videos I've added?

TIA!

[guns1inger]

Different formats compress differently. When converting from Xvid/Divx to mpeg-2 (the compression used for DVD) you should expect the file size to increase by a factor of 3 - 4 times in order to preserve similar quality to the original. As a general rule, 2 hours on a DVD5 is about the maximum capacity before quality compromises must be made. Depending on the source, you might get to three hours without it becoming too noticeable. Xvid/Divx source of the kind you are describing is not considered high quality, and three hours to a disc might be acceptable.

A better option is to get a cheap player than supports Xvid/Divx playback, and you can fit 12 - 14 episodes to a disc without converting.

[marioval]

The "size on media" display in convertxtodvd is rarely if ever correct. I'm not sure about other apps but with convertxtodvd don't worry about file size, worry about movie length. You can safely fit 3 hours of video with good quality. I ususally put 4 hours on 1 single layer DVD and am happy with the output but then again I have a 32 inch tube TV.

[herbster]

Thanks fellas for your help!

So to be clear, if I have say Divx/Xvid video files, I should just burn them as files and watch them on a Divx compatible player instead of converting them to DVD? Either option is absolutely fine by me, I just want to do whatever retains quality. I watch everything on my PC anyway, but I am asking this mainly for archival purposes as well as should I wind up watching something at someone's house, etc.

[Bertieboo]

encoding them to mpeg 2 will reduce quality, so best not to unless you have to

Bert.

[herbster]

Thank you Bert! That's what I wanted to confirm

[lordsmurf]

encoding them to mpeg 2 will reduce quality, so best not to unless you have to
Bert.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. It all depends on how you do it. For starters, be sure to remember to restore the overscan. Next, keep it at the same framerate. Then the nature of MPEG tends to clean up (soften up) some of the noisy areas found on XVID files, and then you can run noise reduction on it too.

Of course, converting to MPEG-2 is not ever going to be as good as capturing it yourself, be it uncompressed AVI or direct to MPEG-2 for DVD-Video.